Lid Blown on SBOE Cover-Up Efforts in 9th CD

March 1, 2019

March 1, 2019 — (Raleigh, NC) Around noon today, the NC State Board of Elections ordered Robeson County Election officials hand over “newly discovered” evidence that implicates high-profile national and local Democrats in a major absentee ballot harvesting operation that dwarfs the number of ballots involved in Bladen County.

“We’ve been quietly fighting for this and other evidence since I stomped out of last Friday’s election protest hearings,” said Jay DeLancy, Director of Voter Integrity Project. “When the SBOE presented Exhibit 66 at the hearing, and Kim Strach claimed it was all they got, we knew somebody was hiding evidence.”

Exhibit 66 purported to be the only recorded names of people dropping off completed absentee ballot request forms at Robeson County’s BOE. The forms are not yet required by state law, but SBOE Director Kim Strach ordered some counties to begin logging the names of people dropping off the requests after (then) Robeson County BOE Chairman, Steve Stone alerted the SBOE of a suspected ballot-harvesting operation, involving DCCC personnel.

According to the December 7, 2018, Charlotte Observer, “an operative from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee dropped off one box of requests on Oct. 8 and another on Oct. 10, totaling 603 voter registration or absentee ballot request forms.” Last summer, according to Stone, the DCCC operative dropped off a business card that was forwarded to Strach’s office.

Last week, the SBOE staff only presented evidence to the Board of 231 Robeson County ballot requests, all from Jennifer Boyd, a Dowless employee. The Board was considering a protest filed by Robeson judicial candidate, Jack Moody, after he had won on Election Day but narrowly lost after more absentee ballots were counted.

At the hearing, Moody’s attorney, Tim Haga, expressed puzzlement over why the staff had presented so few of Robeson’s nearly 2,000 absentee ballots requested,” said DeLancy. “When Kim Strach told Haga that her office was puzzled too, I lost it, screamed ‘how convenient!’ and stormed out of the meeting.”

Strach explained to the Board that Exhibit 66 was “all that they gave us.”

“If Bladen had hidden that much evidence,” said DeLancy, “you can bet that her agency would have gotten a search warrant and surrounded Bladen’s BOE with dogs, helicopters and a SWAT team, so why did they just shrug their shoulders over Robeson?”

The span of the Robeson request log only covered 17 days in September, while the Bladen County version (Exhibit 4.2.3.1.1) spanned activity from Aug 17 to Oct 30, and reported 1,341 ballots. It also listed the name of each individual participating in the ballot harvesting enterprise.

“Bladen’s version of that document was one of the most damaging pieces of evidence against MeRea Dowless,” DeLancy said. “With Robeson collecting even more ballots than Bladen, we wonder why the SBOE didn’t grant immunity to Dowless and learn who the big dogs really were.”

Judge Herbert Richardson gives the oath of office on Monday to the four members of the Board of Elections, Tiffany Peguise-Powers, left, Steve Stone, Daniel Locklear and new member, Larry Townsend.

After hastily departing the meeting, DeLancy notified Steve Stone, who was able to secure copies of the original documents, which brings us to today.

“Now that the cat is out of the bag,” said DeLancy, “the SBOE will go into damage control mode. They were careful to present any and all evidence that could help convict one man. Now, we’re going to see who was suppressing evidence of the wider vote fraud ring operating throughout the region.”

The State Board is scheduled to vote Monday, on Moody’s petition for a new election.

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[Apologies for misspelling the county’s name. It is spelled “Robeson,” but pronounced “RAHB-is-on” and this fact confused the writer. H/t: BC]